An Afternoon of Collaborative Translation

“An Afternoon of Collaborative Translation”
At the Wheeler Centre, 7th December 2019

Thanks to all who made our last event of 2019 such a success.

In our warm up exercise, we did some “jigsaw” poetry, taking the English translations of two contributor poems (one by Vasile Baghiu and the other by Koraly Dimitriadis), and cutting them into individual words. Each group was given the individual words and was invited to create a new poetic work from these fragments.

We were able to produce several poems in this way, some quite brief (see pictured), others more substantial in length.

Then, our wonderfully diverse group of collaborators was able to produce four independent translations of two Romanian poems.

Nicolae Coande – Tălpi mici

Cristina Savin: “This is a love poem. There are a few challenges in the text but overall it is not too difficult. The poet, Nicolae Coande, is well known in Romania. The poem is suitable for people with a solid understanding and knowledge of poetry.“

Costel Stancu

Cristina Savin: “This is a delightful poem full of surprises (with no title!). It is a playful little story that would lend itself quite well to children’s poetry. It is about a young boy who has an imaginary friend; there is an unexpected, gentle twist at the end.“

All these translations will appear in future publications, and will be made available to all TransCollaborate members.